The level of awareness among divorcing parents concerning the impact of divorce on children
Loading...
Authors
Stone, Betty Lew
Issue Date
1987
Type
Thesis
Language
en
Keywords
Alternative Title
Abstract
This study was designed to measure the level of awareness of divorcing parents concerning their parenting skills. Research has indicated that maintaining such skills typically becomes problematic during and after a divorce. This question was of interest for three reasons. First, because it provided the opportunity to see if other elements such as age, number and gender of children, income, or interest in a workshop on parenting skills clustered with this measure of general awareness. Second, it was presumed that Increased awareness would be of therapeutic benefit to divorcing parents. Third, an indication that divorcing parents are unaware of such issues would then strengthen an argument for the desirability of a workshop or support group that offered an increase in such awareness. A five-page questionnaire was designed to measure this level of awareness and also to measure the extent to which the respondents self-reported experiencing each problem personally. The questionnaire was mailed to 105 divorcing parents in Alameda County, California. The names and addresses of the parents with whom the children resided were obtained from public records. The response rate was 30%. (24 women and 6 men). In filling out the questionnaire, only 1% of the items were left unanswered. The level of awareness that parents had about common parenting problems was higher than anticipated. Of the items that measured this, 38% were answered in a way that indicated awareness. In analyzing the response patterns, it became clear that an individual's level of awareness did not seem useful as a standard by which to gauge the need for intervention, as had been hypothesized. There was no association between the level of awareness and interest in taking a parenting workshop or with any of the demographic variables measured in the questionnaire. Those respondents who said they would be interested in a workshop or parenting group differed in only two ways from those respondents who 40 said they would not be interested: No men wanted to participate in a workshop. The respondents who did not want to participate had more female children than those who did want to participate.